What Does The Affordable Care Act Mean For You?

The Cigna Insurance website offers the above chart to help you better understand these changes and the associated penalties. They also offer several informative PDFs for further reading.


There has been a lot of lively debate over the Affordable Healthcare Act, or “Obamacare”. The fact is, it is a rather large piece of legislation and it can seem pretty complex to most people. However, for business owners, it can seem pretty intimidating to puzzle through. Though you may not realize it, as a property manager, there may be aspects of it you do need to know about. If you do have employees under you, you may need to take a look at the changes that have taken place in respect to insurance issues that now apply.
The employer mandate is something that has been discussed at length. Many people do not understand fully what it is they will or will not be required to do. Not everyone is going to be required to provide insurance: this mandate only applies to those who have 50 employees or more. Those that are full time will need to be insured. Though the mandate was set to go into effect this year, you now have until 2015 to do this. As of October 1st of 2013, employers were supposed to notify their employees about the Health Insurance Marketplace by way of written notice if those businesses were covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act.  You can find out about that act via the Department of Labor website and you can also find those written notices as well as other useful information via the Healthcare.gov website.
If you have under 50 employees but you want to go ahead and provide health insurance, you can still do that. The SHOP marketplace works in much the same way as the individual marketplace, but it is specifically for small businesses. Through that site you can compare plans, control the premiums you pay, and find options for your employees. In 2016, the SHOP marketplace will be available to all businesses with up to 100 full time employees. There are also tax benefits available to certain eligible small businesses under the Affordable Care Act for providing health care coverage.
Because many property managers are self employed, there are also options available via the individual marketplace. Because there is an individual mandate on health insurance, everyone has to obtain it or pay a penalty for not having it. The marketplace does however split the plans into tiered groups.

  • Platinum: highest premiums, but also offer the highest level of coverage without out of pocket cost

  • Gold

  • Silver

  • Bronze: lowest premium, but also lowest amount of coverage in respect to out of pocket costs.

These plans range from about 60-90% of bills covering 10% increments for each of the tiers. If you are under 30, and/or you have a hardship exemption, there’s also a “catastrophic” tier with that offers high deductibles.

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Kurt Kroeck

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By Kurt Kroeck